


your warm whispers

by sinagtala (strikinglight)



Category: Persona 5, Persona Series
Genre: M/M, Mornings, POV Second Person, Sleepovers, feelings-seeds being planted probably, see also: why yusuke walked out on akira without saying anything that one time he slept over
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-10
Updated: 2017-07-10
Packaged: 2018-11-30 07:41:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11459088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strikinglight/pseuds/sinagtala
Summary: Morgana’s paws. The early June rain on the roof, the wind. You’re used to all these little stirrings by now; you know they wouldn’t wake you on any other morning. And so you feel acutely what is strange aboutthismorning, without even needing to see: how Yusuke holds himself at a distance, arms folded shyly in, never raising his voice.





	your warm whispers

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place in-game sometime in early June, a little after the Madarame palace. I can't be the only person who was !!!!! at the prospect of having Yusuke for a roommate only to have him walk out on me the following morning.
> 
> Prompt fill for [Rice](https://twitter.com/raizzart) (give her art some love! <3), for "things you said when you thought I was asleep."
> 
> Title from "Warm Whispers" by Missy Higgins, AKA the song I was looping while writing this, which 10000% makes me think of lovely slow mornings where romance is potentially blossoming.

The early morning wind is thick with last night’s rain—wet, you find, breathing in the gust that blows through your half-open window. Slow-moving, in the way of summer. You don’t even need to open your eyes to know that it’s much too early to be awake. It could be the sun isn’t even up; maybe the night brought the clouds down, and the mist with them.

“Raven feathers in the snow,” you hear Yusuke murmur, somewhere above your head. Soft as the dawn, but every word comes clear.

You’ve known him less than a month, but the sound of his voice makes you realize you’ve probably always had him figured for an early riser. In spite of how he might seem on the surface—like still water, retiring and poised and quiet—there’s a restlessness to Yusuke that appears when you watch him close. It’s in his eyes, always darting back and forth, taking in the world with an unnerving hunger. In his hands, too, the way they flex and curl in the absence of brush or pencil, meander in circles through the air as he talks, drum idly against tabletops.

“What’s that?” chirps Morgana. Closer than Yusuke, right by your ear. The pillow shifts under your head as he rises and pads down the mattress.

Morgana’s paws. The early June rain on the roof, the wind. You’re used to all these little stirrings by now; you know they wouldn’t wake you on any other morning. And so you feel acutely what is strange about _this_ morning, without even needing to see: how Yusuke holds himself at a distance, arms folded shyly in, never raising his voice. All too aware he’s a stranger here—and yet, for all that, his eyes riveted on your face.

“That’s what his hair looks like, spread across the pillowcase. If I had charcoal, I could—”

You can’t tell if he stops himself, or if it’s Morgana who interrupts. More the latter, you suspect, from how cheeky he sounds. Always as if he knows things nobody else knows. “You could ask him to model for you, in place of Lady Ann. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.”

“Akira has far too much on his plate. I couldn’t possibly ask him to indulge me.”

“You mean you don’t think he’s pretty.” Morgana’s next words are muffled. He must be washing himself, tongue to fur, but you still hear him well enough, and immediately you wish you hadn’t.

You never realized it was possible to _feel_ a gaze, until Yusuke. It was one thing to hear Ann talk about that feeling of being stared down wherever she went, shivering, hands folded over her nape as if to protect it. Having the full force of it turned on you—it’s something else, to put it mildly. The tingling that begins at the crown of your head and spiders down to your temples, prickles hot in the hollows of your cheeks, says as much.

“Oh, no! No, not at all. On the contrary, I find him very beautiful.” He stops himself this time, for sure. You’re a good deal more than half awake now, but you wait with your eyes shut until he adds, “Objectively speaking, of course.”

“Objectively speaking.”

 _“Objectively speaking,”_ Yusuke repeats, careful to enunciate each syllable, his implacability shaken. You can’t deny this startles you; his head is too far up in the clouds, usually, for discomfort or jokes or teasing. How strange it must be for him to realize—as you have—that at this moment, this morning, his mind is nowhere else but in this room. Fully present, focused as it only is before a cherished work of art.

He changes the subject so quickly you think him almost shy. “Why does he sleep with his glasses on?”

“He fell asleep with them on,” says Morgana. “It happens sometimes. You can take them off for him before you go, if you want to.”

“Won’t that wake him?”

“I think not. And you’d be doing him a favor.” Again you feel the mattress shift, bounce a little as Morgana springs and leaps—into Yusuke’s arms, maybe, or onto his shoulders. “I’d do it myself, but no hands, you know.”

Yusuke doesn’t answer. In the silence that follows, you do your best to pretend to be dead. To lie still and not stir, or smile, or sit up. You count the seconds, listen only to the wind and to the sounds of the streets outside, waking up slow. You hear a bicycle bell, two voices calling to one another down the alley across the way. Nothing more, no further words, only the quiet stretching on so long you start to wonder if he’s already gone.

Then you feel the glasses slide off your face, the near-inaudible clicking sound the plastic frames make as he leans across to set them on the windowsill. You don’t expect his hand to come back, but seconds later you feel it on your skin this time—his fingertips smooth to touch, rain-kissed and cool, brushing your hair back from your forehead.

“His hair is... unruly, isn’t it?”

You can’t help it; you chase the sensation, lean into his palm with your eyes shut. You hear Morgana close by, purring in Yusuke’s ear like he’s on to you. The hand withdraws, too quickly. “I should—I should probably go. I can’t stay here.”

“Suit yourself,” says Morgana. If the arch of a cat’s back were a sound, you think it would be those two words. “Want me to tell him goodbye for you when he wakes up?”

You hear cat feet landing on the floorboards, the wood so old now it sighs and creaks with every little movement, but Yusuke’s own steps do no more than whisper across the floor. Yusuke himself seems barely of this world sometimes, otherworldly as the mist that drifts between the houses. Perhaps just as impossible to hold in one place.

“No, thank you,” he says, distant now, on the stair. It’s warm in the room again, you think. Way too warm for a morning after a night of rain. “When he wakes up, I’ll tell him myself.”


End file.
